Please complete the research discussion assignment in a Jupyter or R Markdown notebook. You should post the GitHub link to your research in a new discussion thread.
Now that we have covered basic techniques for recommender systems, choose one commercial recommender and describe how you think it works (content-based, collaborative filtering, etc). Does the technique deliver a good experience or are the recommendations off-target?
You may also choose one of the three non-personalized recommenders (below) we went over in class and describe the technique and which of the three you prefer to use.
Metacritic: How We Create the Metascore Magic
Rotten Tomatoes: About Rotten Tomatoes
IMDB: FAQ for IMDb Ratings
Rotten Tomatoes Recommender System
About Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes and the Tomatometer score are the world’s most trusted recommendation resources for quality entertainment. As the leading online aggregator of movie and TV show reviews from critics, the system provide fans with a comprehensive guide to what’s Fresh – and what’s Rotten – in theaters and at home.
The Tomatometer score represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show. A Tomatometer score is calculated for a movie or TV show after it receives at least five reviews.
The Tomatometer also serve movie and TV fans with original editorial content through social channels, produce fun and informative video series, and hold live events for fans across the country.
Challenges
Rotten Tomatoes calculates its ratings by pulling reviews from major publications or other news sources. This can be challenging, as the RT team must determine who counts as a valid and qualified critic. It maintains standards which include source approval or be a critic belonging to one of a handful of approved critic societies.
The RT team has some discretion of whom to include in their critic rankings.
To receive a Certified Fresh rating a movie must have a steady Tomatometer rating of 75% or better.
Rotten Tomatoes turns film reviews into an unnatural binary choice – either “fresh” or “rotten”
The Certified Fresh designation may be held at the discretion of the Rotten Tomatoes editorial team.
Possible Approach
The ticketing website Fandango shares parent company with Rotten Tomatoes and integrates the tomatometer scores onto its platform to allow movie goers a general consensus before they see a movie.
Rotten Tomatoes has impacted the way in which people think about which films to see; they no longer rely on one or two critics for an opinion, but rather rely on audience and critical reviews to generate a consensus.
This is not quite good for the industry as the Fandango platform may be bias in advertising a Movie rated high by Rotten Tomatoes since they share the same parent company.
References
https://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Fresh-Look-For-Rotten-Tomatoes-Help-from-3304427.php https://www.wired.com/story/is-rotten-tomatoes-ruining-movies/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/whose-reviews-should-you-trust-imdb-rotten-tomatoes-metacritic-or-fandango-7d1010c6cf19/